the terrible and the great
by NiNA-eN
Summary: "Well," Aomine managed to warble between intervals," at least you managed to make the food edible." -Sakurai Ryou/Momoi Satsuki, Aomine Daiki. for tumblr/BPS challenge #27, "food."


**written for basketballpoetsociety's challenge #27,** **"food"**

* * *

He was not sure how things had turned out like this.

Aomine-kun had followed him home after school, with demands of dinner (apparently his parents weren't going to be home tonight) - and of course, where he went, Momoi-san was never far behind.

And so he had had his teammate and manager toeing off their shoes at his house's front door (his parents too would not be home that night, for working late), following him through the hallway and into his living room, and then somehow into the kitchen _with him_ whilst he prepped the food. And apparently, Momoi-san, when entering the location of a kitchen in particular, _would suddenly be overcome with some strange confidence in and a very immediate need to prove her own (rather notorious) cooking skills. _Aomine, having already seen the warning signs by then, had slipped quickly away in the chaos_ ("Momoi-san, you're not meant to turn up the fire that high-!") _and he, to prevent her from accidentally burning down his whole house, found himself now roped into providing an impromptu cooking lesson:

"-wait, you can't just drop a whole bag of potatoes into a pot of water-!"

Not for the _nth_ time, he caught her wrist just in time. She turned to him with a guileless smile and he shrank back ever so slightly as he turned on a faucet and _somewhat _instructed her in washing them thoroughly, "p-please scrub them properly." And then, in using a peeler and slightly smaller knife _(why was she holding a cleaver?!) _when, after being asked to skin them next -

"is this ok, Sakurai-kun?"

- she presented to him with one large retangular-ish bare potato and six or seven smaller chunks from it with skin attached, for each.

_And it was here Sakurai Ryou realized that, for a person who dealt with numbers and statistics for a living, Momoi Satsuki was not very good with following instructions herself._ Even in _this,_ she tried to follow her own instincts and apply self-concluded deductions. And **that,** _that just didn't quite work out well -_ as in the kitchen, apparently all her analytical skills seemed to literally _regress_ instead.

But for all the mistakes he'd preemptively prevented her from making (and the damage she would definitely have wrought his kitchen/home otherwise), she continued to _hum_ aloud (and faintly off-tune) and there was an undeniable_ bounce_ to her movements as she circled his kitchen. He still wasn't quite sure _what they were actually making_ and didn't quite know how to ask - as she moved with just such _confidence and enthusiasm and __**cheer.**_

And_, well._

He tracked the bob of her hastily-pulled back ponytail with his eyes as she bent over the boiling pot _("-at a distance!" he took her wrist and pulled her away a little, not quite managing to lecture her on the proper surveillance of cooking process)_ and faintly registered the notes of her voice as an innocuous pop song very listened to at the moment. Her complete (if disastrous) earnestness was a little infectious, though – and _endearing,_ he thought and almost smiled at that.

"-where do you keep your carrots, Sakurai-kun?"

He was next to her in seconds.

And so at the end of the day, they ended up with a few rather lopsided-looking dishes. There was a disproportionately large bowl of meat-and-potato-and-carrot stew, an uneven stir-fry and a salad, and one other unidentifiable dish (the only one he hadn't quite been able to salvage) – and as he couldn't help but collapse into his seat, he didn't know whether to look at them again or not. Between trying to take over most of the more _essential_ parts of their dual cooking, he had sneaked tastes when she wasn't looking and adjusted accordingly for each _(evening out overpowering saltiness or savoury-ness with sugar and upping the quantity of separate ingredients for it, for one…)_

"That went quite well, didn't it?"

His hands twitched for a moment and he couldn't really help his look of incredulity as he looked at her then. She was smiling sunny and ever so proudly back at him, hands on her hips as she shed her oven mitts and a dash of flour across her nose _(he didn't even remember using __**that **__ingredient)_ – and he blinked. An involuntary curve rose slowly, unbidden, to his lips.

_"Yes-" _

Aomine had come slinking back in then_ (the traitor)_ and when he perceived Sakurai's efforts in them, tucked in quite happily. He paid for it the next day, however, as he bent over the toilet bowl in continuous nausea and the visiting Sakurai wailed _that he was so, so very sorry and a absolutely worthless human being-! _

_"Well,"_ Aomine managed to warble between intervals," at least you managed to make the food _edible._ Maybe if you kept cooking with her, you can take it further and past food-poisoning levels too _- __**MAYBE?!"**_

Sakurai immediately took back what he'd almost said yesterday and blanched at this.


End file.
